In response to recent remarks attributed to Adamu Muhammad Bulkachuwa, the husband of the former President of the Court of Appeal, a group operating under the auspices of the Association of Ebonyi Indigenes Socio-Cultural in the Diaspora (AEISCID) has urged Nigerians with discernible minds not to take such statements lightly.
When his wife, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, was serving as the President of Nigeria’s Court of Appeal, Senator Bulkachuwa revealed that he had good reason to intervene on behalf of his friends and colleagues during the 9th Senate’s farewell session.
But according to a statement made on Monday in Abuja by Amb. Paschal Oluchukwu, President of AEISCID, the National Judicial Commission, NJC—the organisation with the authority to hire and sanction errant judicial workers under the Nigerian legal system—should look into Bulkachuwa’s remark.
However, the group drew attention to an election case that was still pending before the tribunal and claimed that the news that Her Lordship, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensah, President of the Court of Appeal, had ordered the immediate relocation of both the National Assembly and Governorship/State House of Assembly elections petitions tribunals to Abuja from Abakaliki, where cases were originally scheduled to be tried and decided, was a huge relief.
Oluchukwu argued that even though the Court never made its justifications public, the fact remains that Ebonyi has been in the news lately for reasons other than just insecurity, particularly because of how the State’s most recent governor, Engr. David Umahi conducted himself and treated the judiciary in both the State and the nation as a whole.
“We recall that the first time arguably in the history of the judiciary when a Court was sacked following a coordinated attack by political thugs and both men of the Bar and the Bench in Ebonyi had to take to their heels by scaling the fence was around early December 2014.
“The then ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP had planned to hold its primary election to elect a flagbearer for the ruling PDP in the State for the 2015 Governorship election on the 6th of December, 2014.
“This group further recalls that the battle for the Ebonyi PDP’s Governorship ticket had raged between Elechi’s anointed candidate and then Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu and Elechi’s Deputy whose relationship with his boss had gone South following his preference for the former to succeed him over and above his initially touted choice of Umahi.
“The media investigations had uncovered and consequently reported that as soon as the power-desperate Umahi learnt that a Senior Advocate of Nigeria hired by the then ruling PDP in Ebonyi from Kogi State to secure an injunction stopping the primaries, he allegedly unleashed an army of political thugs armed with guns, machetes and other dangerous weapons to the State’s High Court premises adjacent the old Ebonyi Government House.
“The sporadic gunshots that rented the air dispersed the entire judiciary and everyone took to his or her heels. The fears caused by the pandemonium orchestrated by the activities of the said hoodlums which the then Elechi government had vowed to probe but failed are still fresh in the minds of Ebonyians.
“AEISCID reminisces further that at the larger national scene, Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Abuja Federal High Court I recollect had come under intense criticism from Umahi following his March 2022 sacking of Umahi as Governor as a result of his defection from the PDP to the APC in November 2020. An emotional Umahi who couldn’t hide his feelings dragged the judiciary into the mud, insisting the judgment was purchased by his traducers.
“We enjoin the Nigerian Judiciary in particular and the Ebonyi election petitions tribunals in particular should therefore know that they are actually on trial in this period of our nation’s history. And like American Diplomat, Benjamin Franklin rightly noted: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are,” hence this timely caution.
“The ball is now on the court of their Lordships to either make history or mar themselves and their reputations,” the Group noted.
